


Prism/Prison

by merryfortune



Category: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon - Manga, Canon Retelling, F/M, Incest, Out of Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27601013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune
Summary: Deirdre can only see colours in halves. She tries not to think about why.
Relationships: Arvis/Diadora | Deirdre, Diadora | Deirdre/Siglud | Sigurd
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Prism/Prison

It was true love at first sight from them both, they could both sense it between the other as they enjoyed the resounding newness of what their encounter had permitted them.

He understood from a place of sympathy and genuineness when she said that she couldn’t see the same world as him, but she was thankful for him none the less for letting her see at all. But as she pets his hair and very happily informs him that his soft mop of elegant hair is blue, and his eyes are blue, too and she giggles on that note, she does mourn the fact that there were still colours missing from her eyes where her Grandmother had promised there shouldn’t be grey. All on the coattail of a warning that an ill disaster would follow if she ever met her soul mate at all.

Still, beneath the feeling of her delicate hand, it was in these small moments that, Sigurd knew for certain that loves her and would until the very day that he died. He takes that sacrament in grave seriousness that not even diamonds could cut and now that he could see colours at all, he would even go so far as to say that onyxes couldn’t cut it either given how dark the violet of her eyes are. They’re soulmates. And the colours that they could both see were proof of it.

Since the days of yore, this is always how its been. Violence and destined encounters. The mundane moments in between. Love gives it all and death takes it all. And in between it all, should the right eyes meet the right eyes, the world and its perception would literally change, from the hallows of monochrome scheme, so grey and dreary, to the gallows of the full, prismatic array.

It is because he loves her in whole, Sigurd does not question if there’s a more ominous reason as to why Deirdre can only see in halves. She can see the blue of the sky and the purple of the silks that she wears but when the sun begins to set, she can’t see the flaming orange skies and when he presents her flowers, the red roses are a very dark grey. Almost a black. But she holds the bouquet close to her face and she smiles softly into it, making Sigurd love her all the more as she has such a savouring smile and he smiles in turn.

The world is nothing like that for him. It doesn’t exist in halves where there is still monochrome scattered through the cool blues and soft greens that she is permitted to see. Every colour, every hue, after twenty-something years of monochrome, having had his chanced and fateful meeting with Deirdre has changed him all. She had given him a rainbow prism in his eye, and he was thankful for it.

The world remains this bright place even when she’s gone. That’s how he knows that she’s still alive at all. A vain hope that his friends worry that he’s lying about, gone mad with the indulgence of colour and gone mad with the overwhelming, all consuming love that he has for his wife. The mother of his child.

(He has her eyes… Not literally, they’re blue, like his, he can see it in the mirror but they’re soft. Framed by long lashes and exude a gentleness wrong for violent world that he had been born into. And so, they were just like his beautiful Deirdre’s eyes.)

Her world is grey.

The water she is bathed in. The soap and clothes used to make her clean once more. The sheets that she is given to sleep in. It was all grey and she’s unfailingly confused by this because she knows, at the very least, it is incomplete. As though there was at least half of a more that she ought to see, but she doesn’t voice it as these thoughts are wrong and intangible. She doesn’t say much more than what she can say for certain, such as her name. Deirdre.

Hidden behind thick curtains of almost black, Deirdre languished, confused, in a bed which belonged not to her but to someone else. A Duke. Then those curtains are pulled by a porcelain white hand. That hand, of course, has an owner and he is a man but something about him is smaller and more wounded than that despite his broad shoulders and long hair. Uncertain, scared words tumble out of the mouth of a man whom she had never seen before. Her heart wavers. And her world is still grey, when their eyes meet and their gazes connect, and its like a fireball exploded between them and she is harrowed by the wrongness of it all.

He can see it all. The maroon of the curtains that his true love is hidden behind. The pale lilac of the garments that she wore. And its beautiful. Colours. It was everything and more that he had been promised and it was love at first sight but only for him.

Deirdre looked on and she could see the red of his hair, the gold of his buttons. He would have been gorgeous but there was still so much that she still couldn’t see. She knew, in theory, the names of the colours that she saw. They were hot and warm. Blazing bright. Red, orange, yellow. But she knew, in theory, the names of the colours that she was still disallowed, the cool and cold, the serene blurring low. Blue, purple, green. Her heart wrenched and she knew something was wrong. Deathly wrong.

Arvis was not pleased to hear these musings from Deirdre.

The temptation to have slap her for her insolence did cross Arvis’ mind but the impulse of violence that had rendered him in a mere split second only made him sink lower into his self-loathing. He couldn’t look at her for a week when she had finally confessed that there were still colours missing from the array of what she could see. He should have known as she never complimented the robes that he got for her which were in contrasting colours to his own, dyed with violet and lilac. Jealous feelings of knowing that there was someone else or some force out there denying him even the pleasure of loving and knowing his soul mate festered inside of Arvis but at least he still had her. In matrimony, be it holy or unholy.

Unfortunately, all these mysteries of Deirdre’s eyes and the colours that they saw and did not see, all fell into pieces when Lord Sigurd had stormed the castle.

For a split second, Deirdre saw it all. Literally and figuratively. Every colour that there was and could be on display within the Grannvale Castle. Splendour all around her but it was the man in front of her, whom she raced for against her husband’s wishes and declarations, was the most splendid of all.

Were it not for the harrowing circumstances of this revelation, Deirdre would have been awed by the new, unravelling colours around her. She reached out for Sigurd’s hands and she understood intuitively. She knew this man. Romantically, lovingly, carnally. She had borne him a first-born child, after all, and looking into his blue eyes and blue hair, she felt a calm that she did not feel with Arvis. 

Ancient words of evil came from Arvis’ mouth, youthful with his petty feelings. He wouldn’t allow it. He could not allow it.

Deirdre was his and he knew from her body language alone that she could see it all. Every colour. And he knew that he was fit to defile it all as he conjured a flame which could eviscerate and burned not red nor orange or even yellow but blue. A blue which seeped down low and Arvis strode forward. With just a touch, he was able to inflict his curse and he would be able to wean his wife from her previous lover.

Sigurd was desiccated immediately. Turned to charcoal and ashes and even those burned away in a bright flash that burned white hot.

Deirdre gasped. Her voice failed in her throat and her eyes widened. The afterimage of Sigurd’s expression, of true and unfathomable horror, was singed into her retinas. An important and royal blue that she desperately clung to even as the colour itself was robbed of her visage. But she remembered it.

She remembered it all as she came to her knees and Arvis approached her. Loomed over and touched her with the hand of his God.

“Our love is written in the stars, my lady,” Arvis coldly informed her, “if you had anything with this man, it was written in bones and embers. Pitiful in comparison to the splendour that we have together.”

Deirdre’s heart stopped as she looked around. In her periphery, she saw Arvis, his skin was ghost white and his hair a vibrant flaming red. In front of her, in the rivets of her hands, in the raw of her life and love lines, was the ashes of her dearest Sigurd. The memory of his blue hair and blue eyes bleeding fast. She swallowed. Her mouth was dry, and she looked down at herself, ash and soot and dust, on the blinding white of her gown. Trying to find the scarcest hint that she had been robbed of all the ways in which Sigurd had loved her. But, alas, the drawstrings a limpid grey than the ethereal lilac that they ought to have been.

“Do you understand, my love?” Arvis prompted her.

“Y-Yes, Lord Husband.” Deirdre replied.

Arvis sank to his knees, crouched beside her, he took her chin and pressed a scant kiss onto her trembling lips.

“Good,” he breathed, malicious and cruel, “now quit dirtying yourself on our enemy’s ashes.”

“U-Understood.” Deirdre stammered.

She blinked back hot, red tears as she gazed helplessly at her palms faintly browned by Sigurd’s ashes. Her soulmate’s ashes. One of her soulmates’ ashes, really, she accepted grimly. Her heart quaked in her chest and regardless of if she liked it or not, her eyes acclimatised to the red and black world that she now belonged to. The blazing sunset followed by the burning twilight seeped into the hall, bedecked by spiral staircases, where this ill and fated encounter had taken place. The white marble walls were dyed orange and maroon and crimson, it all seeped through and Deirdre searched it all for a hint of grey which might allude to blue but all that remained was the dust on her hands.


End file.
